Aching Hour
by wonderwoundedhearers
Summary: She'd made a mistake – they'd made a mistake – and he'd just walked out on her. Graverobber returns to Shilo to set it right. Lem/Lang. O/s.


**Aching Hour**

He couldn't sleep.

His dumpster was cold, the trash inside sharp beneath his back, and he wondered whether he was really as much of a fucking idiot as he felt.

For weeks, _months_, he'd had a thing going with the ineffable Shilo Wallace.

She was alive, defying the local and city-wide rags that said otherwise, and she had been prospering for exactly one and a half years since that fateful opera. She'd gone from peddling lesser drugs for barely nothing to making mounds of credits in a competitive market.

She'd grown up, and _nicely_.

The first time Graverobber saw her he'd done a double-take, trying to put Bug's reputation to Shilo's beautiful face. She was untouched, moon-pale, but feisty as fuck beneath her killer curves and gothic chokers.

He'd needed to collaborate with someone, share the reward on a particularly fine piece of Z harvesting that was a little big-scale, even for him, and his contacts had given him the name of Bug. She was said to be one of the hardest dealers, but something that no one knew was that beneath the roughened exterior she was soft.

Very soft. _Incredibly_ soft…

Graverobber redirected his thoughts to head off the erection waiting to happen if he continued down that road.

She'd helped him out, split the credits between them, and when it was all over and done with he'd made the best decision he'd ever made. He'd made a pass at her.

At first, Shilo had been stony-faced, but that was before the mother of all sinful smirks had curled her pretty red lips and she'd dragged him upstairs for a night of _the __best_ fucking he'd ever had.

After that…well, they were inseparable.

Every morning was spent under soft sheets that smelt like her, skin pressed to skin in a sleep-warm embrace that never failed to make his cock hard, which then lead to the most mind-blowing morning sex on the planet. Every night was spent drinking, smoking, recounting, watching re-runs curled up on her ragged couch, and then bed, where the sex would be long and leisurely.

Graverobber hadn't touched another woman since they'd begun their…whatever it was, and all zaddicts looking to pay without credits were shown the door. He didn't want anyone else. He wanted Shilo, all day every day in every way, and thanks to his big mouth he was without her.

Shilo was tough, but it seemed that when it came to him she'd developed a bit more than a soft spot. She wanted him, _needed _him, just as much as he did her.

That's why it was worse that he had gotten it all so wrong, because everything was mutually perfect. There was nothing to pick at, nothing to moan about, nothing to blame his reaction on.

It had all started the night before, just with two words.

'_I__'__m __alright_.'

He'd looked at her strangely when she'd said that, still holding the whiskey bottle out for her to take as she lay on his chest while they both watched TV from the battered couch. She'd never turned it down before, and…he'd also noticed she hadn't had a smoke since the day before.

He'd asked her what was wrong, if she needed a quick pick-me-up like she had before when she'd felt some after effects of her father's poison, and there had been a lull.

They'd never had a lull before, _ever_. Lulls were for other people having sex and feeling awkward in the hours between fucks. They'd never been awkward. They had always felt…well, right. Ish.

He'd asked again, and she'd just come out with it.

She was pregnant.

Graverobber snorted in his dark dumpster at the thought.

Shilo, pregnant. It was wrong, it was right, and it was every shade in between.

He could imagine her with a baby, doting on it, looking into the crib with her a smile on her face, but he would never fit into that picture. He was a street rat, a bum that had raised himself only high enough to extract and peddle Z, and a man like him could never be a father.

Except he was. He was going to be. Right at that very moment, while he was trying to sleep in that cold, dark dumpster, his baby was growing inside Shilo. Shilo, who had told him to get out for a few hours after he'd flown off of the handle, and who he hadn't gone back to.

He hadn't taken it well. He admitted to himself that he would have rather her tell him like she did than try and pretty the truth up for him, but still…no, he'd definitely not taken it well.

In fact, the bottle of whiskey decorating the opposite wall and the floor surrounding it in Shilo's place was testament to that.

He'd thrown the bottle, smashed it, sent glass flying, and growled at her. He'd recounted an earlier conversation when they'd brought up protection, when she had told him she was infertile from her 'medicine'. He'd downright _accused _her of lying, when, really, he knew she'd never do anything like it.

She'd made a mistake – _they_'d made a mistake – and he'd just walked out on her.

Shilo hadn't screamed, hadn't told him to get lost, just firmly said he should take a walk, clear his head, and come back.

He'd taken a walk, a _long _one, right to the other side of the city, and his head still wasn't clear.

But he did know one thing: he wanted her.

It was an ache in his chest, demanding to be soothed her touch, her lips, her warmth, her sweet scent on his tongue…

He needed her, and as his eyes snapped open in that dumpster, he realised that that was enough incentive to get his ass back to her.

He did.

Graverobber ignored the clamouring zaddicts, trailing and stumbling after him for a fix as he strode through the shadowed alleys. There were a few brave ones, jonesing enough to take him on and walk directly into his path even when his expression was so determined.

Those ones were kicked aside, shaken off, or stared at until they crumpled back onto their makeshift street beds.

He didn't have time to fuck around anymore. He had somewhere to be.

* * *

><p>He pressed his forehead to the familiar wood and let out an inaudible breath.<p>

"Shilo," he said clearly, knowing she would be inside to hear his pitiful fucking apology. "Shilo, I'm sorry. Kitten, open the door."

He had left his key when he'd stormed out, and that aching in his chest was begging him just to get through the door and into the apartment to her.

There were footsteps from the other side, familiar ones, and Graverobber waited with bated breath. The door opened quickly. Shilo wasn't one to fuck around, and he was sure that she wouldn't let him do half the grovelling he should have. She didn't have the patience for flowery excuses.

Their gazes met, and Graverobber felt his heart give a dull thud that echoed through his body. She was make-up-less, choker-less, dressed in her shortest shorts and her longest-sleeved t-shirt. Her hair fell down around her shoulders, and Graverobber knew that if he could see it her hair would be curling into the small of her back, it was so long.

She watched him, with those dark eyes.

She was beautiful.

"I shouldn't have left like that. I'm sorry," he said, taking a step towards her.

"At least you know what you did wrong," and with that she turned and walked into the kitchen, leaving the door open for him to come in.

He closed it behind him, flung off his coat in the general direction of the couch, and joined her in the kitchen. She was filling the sink, ready to do the washing up.

The remnants of her solo dinner sat on the kitchen table, lonesome without his place set.

Graverobber moved up behind her, sliding his hands down her arms before reaching her waist and wrapping his arms around it. He nosed away her curls, and his lips met the soft warm skin of her neck.

"I was shocked," he told her softly. "Still am."

Shilo turned off the tap with a sigh, leaning back into him. "I'd be surprised if you weren't. It was a hell of a shock to me."

He paused, before asking, "How long…"

"I don't know," she answered him. "A week or two, tops."

"How did you…"

"I was late, later than usual. I went to see Jones – he tested me."

Jones was the only doctor in the city that was really worth listening to – even though he was cheap and smelt of liquor, he wouldn't steal any organs while you were under or push you into a repo contract.

Graverobber inhaled her strawberry scent, running his nose up and down her neck in the gentlest way he could manage. He didn't apologise again, didn't say anything else, he just let one hand run down her flat belly and slip under the waistband of her shorts.

His fingers slipped through the curls there, the ones she kept just for him. He liked her natural, liked to feel something more than smooth skin when he touched her. He'd had enough of women pretending to be little girls, and he wanted Shilo just as she was.

She took an audible breath as he touched her clit on the way down, and he let his thumb stroke the bump of flesh while his other fingers sought her out.

She was warm, and wet, and, even after all the times he'd fucked her before, she was tight.

He didn't need to say he missed her – it was in the moan he pressed against her neck. She didn't need to say it either, because he could feel it as she trembled against him, clutching the sink edge with white knuckles.

Graverobber touched her, petted her, brought her up to the frenzy he was feeling as he shifted his hard cock against her ass. His other hand busied itself with plucking at her hardening nipples, running the pad of his thumb over them until they crinkled and puckered for him.

Goosebumps pimpled Shilo's skin as he ran his free hand over her, breathing hotly against her neck as he gently pushed down the back of her shorts until they dropped to mid-thigh.

He didn't push her against the sink, force her thighs apart, fuck her hard like he might have done all the times before. He just unzipped himself, pressed a kiss to her neck, and pushed inside of her.

One of her hands came up to grip the back of his head as he bit at her neck, running his teeth up and down her smooth and silky skin while he fucked her gently. She moaned as he pinched her clit, stroking it in time with his thrusts, and gripped one ass cheek, giving him better access to her cunt.

When he stepped it up another notch, she came. Shaking and moaning in the most delicious way, she tightened around his cock impossibly and made him lose it immediately.

He groaned into her hair as he came in long hot spurts, still rubbing her clit as he thrust one last time and lengthening her own bliss.

"Don't make me say it," she breathed eventually, as they both came down.

"Say what?" He murmured.

"I won't say I forgive you," she clarified, "because there's nothing to forgive."

Neither of them apologised in the soft silence that came next, and Graverobber found his muscles losing their tension.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay." Shilo smiled against his face, taking his hand from her thigh and trailing it up to her stomach, where she flattened his palm against the hot skin and laid her hand over his.

Graverobber sighed against her cheek, kissing her there as he rubbed his thumb in circles over her stomach.

Really, he supposed, he didn't actually mind all that much. He just needed her to soothe that ache.

* * *

><p><strong>Author<strong>**'****s ****Note**: Thanks for reading, all reviews are welcome! (_Title __filched __from __cut __Repo! __track.)_


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